Published: Monday, January 14, 2013 at 10:49 PM.

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Home builders haven’t had a lot to get excited about in the last few years. But Trident Building owner Zack Horne came across a project in 2012 that still has the local businessman energized. The ultra modern home is an attention getter, backing up to Interstate 85 near McAdenville with its flat roof and scores of contemporary windows. “It’s as different a house as I’ve ever built,” Horne said. And he thinks the contemporary design, something the owner’s son went to great lengths to secure, offers advantages that illustrate the changing desires of today’s homeowner. Atlanta engineer Richard Thai picked out the design for his parents’ home after a fire left the family to rebuild. He wanted something contemporary but also looked for a plan that would offer an efficient house in terms of energy consumption and less measurable factors. The flat roof, he says, scared a lot of builders away from the undertaking. Horne, who taught Thai’s shop class when the engineer was a high-schooler, was reluctant, too. But he says now the roof with almost no pitch means a lot more usable space inside the home. The same goes for the walls that rise straight up from the ground. That’s important because today’s homeowner wants nothing, especially not space, to go to waste, he says. With three stories, the Thai home has close to 4,000 square feet with four bedrooms and three baths. It’s all on a smaller piece of land than it would normally take to hold a house that size, according to Horne. The numerous windows mean the home benefits from natural light for much of the day. Its residents say they seldom turn on the lights until dark. A white PVC roof reflects sunlight to save in cooling costs and, on top of a garage, gives the family a usable patio space that doesn’t get steamy in summers. Thai says energy efficiency wasn’t the major selling point in most of the home designs he considered. So that feature stood out in the one he chose, a style dubbed the “Cypress” by Oklahoma architect Dan Tyree. But the home’s unique appearance — the same thing that has lots of people calling Horne to ask questions about the place — helped win him over as much as the sustainability. Thai did more than pick out a house and builder. To help stretch the insurance money, he and an uncle actually built and installed the stainless steel railing that gleams outside the new Thai house. It helped that Thai, who does a lot of robotics work, had the machinery necessary for drilling holes in the posts. He and his uncle then ran the stainless cable through the poles. The original estimate for just the railing came in around $129,000, Thai said. They were able to slice a chunk from that budget, though that doesn’t take into account the man hours. He spent a lot of weekends driving from Atlanta to McAdenville. “But it was for my parents,” he said. “They’ve done a lot for me. Sacrificed a lot. So that part was nothing.” But the house, he says, that’s really something.

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Home builders haven’t had a lot to get excited about in the last few years. But Trident Building owner Zack Horne came across a project in 2012 that still has the local businessman energized.
The ultra modern home is an attention getter, backing up to Interstate 85 near McAdenville with its flat roof and scores of contemporary windows.
“It’s as different a house as I’ve ever built,” Horne said.
And he thinks the contemporary design, something the owner’s son went to great lengths to secure, offers advantages that illustrate the changing desires of today’s homeowner.
Atlanta engineer Richard Thai picked out the design for his parents’ home after a fire left the family to rebuild. He wanted something contemporary but also looked for a plan that would offer an efficient house in terms of energy consumption and less measurable factors.
The flat roof, he says, scared a lot of builders away from the undertaking.
Horne, who taught Thai’s shop class when the engineer was a high-schooler, was reluctant, too. But he says now the roof with almost no pitch means a lot more usable space inside the home.
The same goes for the walls that rise straight up from the ground.
That’s important because today’s homeowner wants nothing, especially not space, to go to waste, he says.
With three stories, the Thai home has close to 4,000 square feet with four bedrooms and three baths. It’s all on a smaller piece of land than it would normally take to hold a house that size, according to Horne.
The numerous windows mean the home benefits from natural light for much of the day. Its residents say they seldom turn on the lights until dark.
A white PVC roof reflects sunlight to save in cooling costs and, on top of a garage, gives the family a usable patio space that doesn’t get steamy in summers.
Thai says energy efficiency wasn’t the major selling point in most of the home designs he considered. So that feature stood out in the one he chose, a style dubbed the “Cypress” by Oklahoma architect Dan Tyree.
But the home’s unique appearance — the same thing that has lots of people calling Horne to ask questions about the place — helped win him over as much as the sustainability.
Thai did more than pick out a house and builder. To help stretch the insurance money, he and an uncle actually built and installed the stainless steel railing that gleams outside the new Thai house.
It helped that Thai, who does a lot of robotics work, had the machinery necessary for drilling holes in the posts. He and his uncle then ran the stainless cable through the poles.
The original estimate for just the railing came in around $129,000, Thai said. They were able to slice a chunk from that budget, though that doesn’t take into account the man hours.
He spent a lot of weekends driving from Atlanta to McAdenville.
“But it was for my parents,” he said. “They’ve done a lot for me. Sacrificed a lot. So that part was nothing.”
But the house, he says, that’s really something.